Wow. You aced this one, A. Thanks for all the information!

My general thoughts still stand, in my own treatment. What you give here makes me appreciate all the more the positive aspects of this poem. What you give here also makes me wonder all the more what might have been had a more syntactically traditional form been used. Handled rightly, the results could not only be disturbing, but transcendent -- the combination one finds in the biblical Book of Lamentations (in the original Hebrew melopoesis especially).

Of course one could argue (with some justice) that only a certain amount of syntactic incoherence could express the "wild regret" described in the poem. I've just been reminded -- of all things -- of how Japanese anime such as Naruto handles such pathos, verbally and graphically. It's very similar to -- and just as disturbing as -- what one finds formally here. And for that matter, what examples we have of ancient Greek music sometimes suggest such incoherence through their melopoesis (the opening track on Musique de la Grece antique, a fragment of a play by Euripides, being a classic example: "I mourn, I mourn, for the blood of your mother, the blood that drives you mad...").

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